Natalie
Portman is in the midst of a very important performance, one that could decide
her future in the movie industry. And, no, it isn’t her return to the big
screen after a two-year break as Jane Foster, the astrophysicist
girlfriend of the title comic-book hero in Thor: The Dark World, which opens this weekend. Instead,
she is acting the role of a best-actress Oscar winner who is finally spreading
her wings and taking advantage of her triumph as a tormented ballerina in
2010’s Black Swan.

The
fact is, winning an Oscar is easy. It’s that next step that you take that
will cause you to either stumble or soar. That is especially true of women, at
least in the past decade and a half or so, who win for a leading
role. While
their male counterparts tend to be older — average age of 44 as opposed to 36
for lead actress winners since 2000, and already established, (Denzel
Washington, Sean Penn, Colin Firth and Daniel Day-Lewis), leading ladies who
take the prize find themselves more at a crossroads career-wise.

Some
of the pitfalls:

• Settling
  for easy money: After making history as the first African-American woman to win
  as best actress by taking home the gold for 2002’s Monster Ball, Halle Berry seized the opportunity for a higher
  paycheck by signing on as a James Bond girl in 2002’s Die Another Day opposite Pierce Brosnan. More
  fatal was her decision to take the title role in 2005’s much-derided Catwoman. While she continues to appear
  as the mutant Storm in the X-Men
  comic-book movies, Berry has yet to find another film role to equal her Academy
  Award winning role.
• Signing
  up for every offer: After her portrayal of country singer June Carter
  Cash in 2005’s Walk the Line,
  Reese Witherspoon — already a popular romantic-comedy star after her success
  with Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama –has worked at a
  rate of nearly a movie a year. Unfortunately, save for this summer’s Mud, most titles such as Rendition, How Do You Know and Water for
  Elephants have belly-flopped both critically and at the box office.
• Stretching
  beyond your comfort zone: Hilary Swank’s tom-boyish looks were a perfect fit
  for her Oscar-winning roles in the reality-based transgender story in 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry ,and as a feisty pugilist
  in 2004’s Million Dollar Baby. But
  she has struggled to find other suitable roles, despite attempting every genre
  from period-piece romance (2001’s The
  Affair of the Necklace) and sci-fi (2003’s The Core) to neo-noir (2006’s The Black Dahlia) and comedy (2007’s P.S. I Love You). The
  closest she came was the little-seen Amelia Earhart biopic in 2009,

So
far, the choices made by Portman — a 32-year-old Harvard grad who made
her big-screen debut almost 20 years ago in 1994’s The Professional — are outshining those made by
other lead actresses who have been lucky enough to find themselves with an
Oscar on their shelf. Her apparent game plan:

• Find
  a profitable venture: After the prim actress displayed a bawdy sense of humor
  in two forgettable R-rated comedies in 2011, No Strings Attached and Your
  Highness, Portman starred in the first film of the Thor franchise. She has said her main
  reason for signing on was to work with director Kenneth Branagh. But this Star Wars princess knows all too well
  the financial benefits of being tied to an ongoing enterprise that caters to
  fanboys. Portman
  also is smart enough to realize that proven box-office clout — something that
  comes far easier to Oscar-winning lead actors — is a commodity even more
  prized than talent in Hollywood. However, unlike Berry, she isn’t limiting
  herself to mostly commercial fare.
• Tend
  to your private life: Being in the Oscar spotlight can take a toil. Recent best
  actress winners including Sandra Bullock, Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon,
  Hilary Swank and Halle Berry have found their personal relationships disrupted
  shortly after their moment of Academy Award glory. Portman,
  however, decided to put career pursuits on hold for a while and take some
  time off. She put her hiatus to good use, marrying dancer and Black Swan choreographer Benjamin
  Millepied in 2012 and giving birth to their son, Aleph, in
  2011.
• Seek
  out art: A serious actress can’t live by popcorn vehicles alone, especially if
  she wants to be in the business for the long haul. Two of the best ways to
  ensure you find quality work? Hitch your wagon to an esteemed filmmaker
  (which Portman previously did with Mike Nichols in 2004’s Closer, which earned her a supporting Oscar nomination for her
  efforts). Last
  year, Portman shot not just one but two back-to-back experimental films, both
  improvised, with Tree of Life
  director Terrence Malick. Knight of Cups
  and a second still-untitled movie are due next year.
• Do
  it yourself: After directing a short as well as a segment of the 2009
  anthology film New York, I Love You,
  Portman is preparing to debut as a feature-film director. The Jerusalem born
  actress is helming, starring and co-writing a movie based on the autobiographical novel Tale of Love and Darkness by Israeli
  author Amos Oz.

Portman almost had a chance to collaborate with two respected female directors as well. Patty Jenkins (Monster) was briefly attached to Thor: The Dark World until she left over creative differences. The situation is messier with Jane Got a Gun, a rare female-oriented Western, what with the entertainment press having a field day with a lawsuit against Scottish director Lynne Ramsey (We Need to Talk About Kevin) over her quitting the production. The movie forged ahead, though — but only after going through a raft of potential leading men including Jude Law and Michael Fassbender — with Gavin O’Connor (Miracle, Warrior) in the director’s seat while Ewan McGregor and Joel Edgerton play opposite Portman.

Actually,
Portman is not alone among more recent best-actress winners in taking better
control of their post-Oscar fates. Rom-com queen Sandra Bullock has managed to
re-invent herself in her late 40s into a serious actress after her success in
2009’s The Blind Side — and we
expect a second chance at an Academy Award nomination with the massively
successful Gravity.

Meryl
Streep, obviously, is in a class of her own with a record 17 Oscar nominations
(and with an expected 18th for her work in next month’s August: Osage County) and a third win as
Margaret Thatcher in 2011’s The Iron Lady.
That she shows no signs of stopping at age 64 should give hope to any actress over
30.

But
if any female star represents the true future for women in Hollywood, it is the
sassy and smart Jennifer Lawrence, who at an impossibly young 23 is showing you
can “have it all” after breaking out at age 20 with an Oscar
nomination for 2010’s Winter’s Bone
and establishing herself as an A-list talent by winning an Academy Award in
last year’s comedy Silver Linings Playbook.

She has done this while proving her chops as an action hero and box-office draw
that appeals to both sexes in The Hunger
Games franchise, which continues with Catching
Fire, opening on Nov. 22. And to
top it all off, David O. Russell the director of Silver Linings Playbook and co-star, Bradley Cooper, readily
wanted to repeat the experience of working with the actress again and they all teamed up in the soon
to open American Hustle. This just proves
that Oscar can open doors — if you pick the right ones to walk through.